John Fante - 'Wait Until Spring, Bandini'

I began reading this novel last night and finished it during the early hours of this morning, as I'm wont to do occasionally. It was the same with the last one by John Fante that I read, 'Ask The Dust' - as with the likes of Charles Bukowski, Richard Brautigan, and sometimes Adolfo Bioy Casares, I seem to be able to rampage through Fante's prose like a monster truck with its breaks cut. I meet no resistance at any point - it's a pleasurable and easy venture - and this is not to be confused with simplicity.

Devotees of Bukowski will probably find much to like in Fante's work. The former freely acknowledged him as a huge influence, and when reading the likes of 'Wait Until Spring, Bandini' you find echoes of Henry Chinaski when in fact you have to remind yourself that it's the other way round. Both are concerned with the workings and foundation of the male psyche in bygone days of blue collar America. Bandini's America and in particular Bandini's Los Angeles feels very much the same as Chinaski's.

Knowing the cliche yet throwing myself entirely upon the reader's mercy in the hope that you won't adopt too much of a scornful expression, I think part of the reason that I enjoy and relate to the works of Bukowski and Fante so much is that I was once a young man not even out of his teens who, mostly in the name of beer money, did a variety of jobs he hated and was attuned to the sense of unfairness, humilation, cynicism, and above all boredom that such a situation inspires. Bukowski writes in his introduction to 'The Bandini Quartet' that at one point in his life he was prone to exclaiming "I am Bandini, Arturo Bandini!" and this in turn mirrors the spirit in which many read his own tales of Chinaski - there is much to be found that is real and true if you've led and found yourself stuck in a certain way of life. I am not Arturo Bandini any more than I am Henry Chinaski, but enough of their thoughts and lives coincide with mine that I find it hard not to identify strongly with them at times. This is a testament to the power of both authors I think, although probably also to my own inclination to insert myself in some way into narratives that truly grip me. We all do it though, right?